I gather that Dick Cheney and I have different opinions regarding what qualifies as 'reprehensible' conduct. He feels that it's reprehensible to question the rationale for a war while it's going on, whereas I feel it's reprehensible to wait until it's over to do so.
A war has got to have objectives that execution of it can meet, and so far I 've heard of just one: the elimination of Saddam Hussein as a power figure. Okay, done, and good deal. Now what? The rationale for being in Iraq seems to be 'to fight terrorism' and 'to make Iraq a democratic society'. Neither seems to be happening, but more important, neither seems to be something that can be achievable by fighting a war there.
Its possible that brighter people than me can see where in fact what we are doing does work to acheive those objectives, but as for me, its a non-starter. I think that the only thing we're doing is killing our people for no good reason.
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I agree with that, and I like the phrase. I think it does a nice job of summarizing a couple of concepts -- one being that you don't project force into an area where you cannot sustain it for the amount of time needed to execute the mission, and another being that you don't go into a war for unclear purposes (or purposes that become unclear). I had heard of a management game called 'Going to Wichita' or something like that, the core of which is a group of people who take a long dusty drive to Wichita because each of them thought that the others wanted to go, or had a good reason for going. I think we've gone to Wichita.
Much as I'd like to, I can't pretend that withdrawing would be painless or without negative effects. However, I don't see where they would be any worse than staying. I think that if Bush wants to make the case to stay, he needs to demonstrate that the case for staying is stronger than the case for leaving. Unfortunately for us, that would mean that he would have to acknowedge the case for leaving, and that he will not do. Or Cheney will not do, which is the same thing.
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